I Guess I’m Just a Bad Person
In 2008, I didn’t vote for the soon-to-be President because I knew I didn’t know him. Heck, when I hire someone, even if it’s just to mow the yard, I like a few questions answered about them more than the fact that they want the job. Maybe like, “Do you have a lawn mower?”
After he was elected, my wife, bless her heart, urged me to “give him a chance.” Reluctantly, I agreed to do so in order to deceive her into thinking that I was a fair-minded person. Women, for some reason, like to think of their husbands as fair-minded. About two weeks into his term, which coincided with the scheduled Cole bomber’s military trial, the Obama Attorney General announced that the trial would be moved to New York City to a Federal court. I had the same reaction the cowboy in the commercial had upon learning that his salsa was made in “NEW YORK CITY?”
Well, it’s all been down hill since then. I think if a potential yard guy had responded to my question about his ownership of a lawn mower with, “Hope and change,” I don’t believe I would have hired him.
For those of you who voted for our present president in ‘08, I know I’m supposed to be understanding about your little oops. Sorry. Can’t do it. You were told that Obama spent 20 years in a church whose minister seemed to let the words, “God damn America,” slip through his lips with conviction. You were told that he was buddies with Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group that conducted a campaign of bombing public building, police stations, the US Capitol Building, and the Pentagon. Heck, Ayers helped launch Obama’s political career by holding a fundraiser in his home. I must be a little more cautious than most of you folks because I made the connection of guilt by association. I guess I’m just a bad person.
I think everyone knows the big problems associated with Obama. What they may not have taken note of or remember are the seemingly small things.
Let’s begin with the great orator’s speaking abilities. I remember when he made a soaring speech in the 2004 Democratic Convention. I was impressed with the young man’s abilities as an orator. The fact that he used a teleprompter didn’t bother me. However, when he used a teleprompter when he addressed sixth graders at the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia, I must admit that I muttered under my breath, “What the Hell?” To be fair, let’s give him credit for being an excellent reader.
While running for office in ’08, Obama gave a speech in a private home in San Francisco. At the fundraiser he said, referring to folks in small towns in the Midwest, “...they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to their guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or... uh, anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration.” I’d say he had a pretty sharp eye by recognizing that Midwest folks are pretty darn religious and like their guns. These facts have nothing to do with frustration or bitterness. These facts are more related to a faith in God and a fascination with blowing the Hell out of stuff. He missed the mark when he suggested that Midwesterners are anti-immigrant. He probably just forgot the word “illegal.”
After reviewing some of his remarks while not using a teleprompter, I’m beginning to understand why he hasn’t released his higher education transcripts...particularly his math and geography records. "When I meet with world leaders, what's striking -- whether it's in Europe or here in Asia..." (He was in Hawaii.); "We're the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad." (Please, it’s the Continental Railroad); "I'm here with the Girardo family here in St. Louis." (He was in Kansas City, Missouri.); "How's it going, Sunshine?" (He was in Sunrise, Florida.); "I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go." (What?); "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." (There was a tornado in Kansas, but just twelve people died, not ten thousand.) Heck, even I know where I am and how many states there are at all times.
Everyone I know knows that you don’t call policemen stupid, at least not so that they can hear you. Obama said the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police acted “stupidly” when they arrested his friend, Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates. President Obama admitted he didn’t have all the facts but called the police arrest stupid. He went on to say, “...there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.” Presidents don’t usually comment on folks being arrested even when they’re friends. That’s just a fact.
No one was more respected, with the possible exception of Eisenhower, after World War II than Winston Churchill. After the September 11 attacks, the British government offered to loan George W. Bush a prized bust of Churchill for his office. George was proud of the offer and placed it in the Oval Office where it remained until the new President arrived. The British offered to extend the loan to Obama for another four years. His response was, and I paraphrase here, “Throw the bum out.” Today it sits in the residence of Ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald just down the road from the White House. I suspect the British chose not to send the bust all the way back to England because they’ve surmised that the bust is likely to return to the White House and occupy the Oval Office longer than the current resident.
About the strangest thing I ever ate as a kid was beef liver and buttermilk. I hated the stuff. According to Obama’s Dreams of My Father, he ate snakes, grasshoppers, and dogs as a youth in Indonesia. I don’t really know what to make of these self-reported facts other than to say that little Barack didn’t live on my block as a kid.
As for drugs, as I’ve said in the past, “A truck load of burning marijuana could run over me, and I wouldn’t know what hit me.” In Dreams from My Father, Obama confesses that he used pot in high school. Frankly, I could have gone all day without hearing that confession. He listed himself as part of the Choom Gang, Hawaiian slang for pot smoker. Real Presidents don’t get high on drugs; they use alcohol like other real Americans.
I guess it’s just me, but I’m a little suspicious of folks who associate with domestic terrorists, folks who associate with folks who clearly hate America, and folks who eat dog, smoke pot, and can’t speak to sixth graders without a teleprompter. I don’t care if he does have a lawn mower, I ain’t hiring him.
As I said, in ‘08 I didn’t vote for him because I knew that I didn’t know him. Four years later, I won’t vote for him because now I do know him.
enough
